Early strategic leaks from the White House of the state of the union address have attempted to nudge the coverage in the direction of the economy. This makes sense, the administration has positive numbers to point to – 28 straight months of job growth, a dramatically improved stock market – and his approval rating (inextricably linked to the economy) is inching upwards. At the same time, aides have apparently bemoaned coverage of the inaugural address as over-emphasizing the president's increased activism on social issues.

We'll know soon enough how much of this sub rosa chatter was a game of expectations-setting and media skid-greasing, but I suspect that the speech will sound less like an economic primer and more like the "come at me, bro" marker-setting that's come to characterize post-election Obama. I believe now the administration's second term is built on these gestures. Barack Obama's next four years has begun by rolling him out at Troller-in-Chief.

For the most part, the social media savvy of the Obama White House has been positive in messages and outcomes: they rally people around hashtags, make photos go viral, reveal senses of humor at once nerdy and winsome (add to Biden crashing a Reddit AMA and the official Death Star proposal response, Steven Chu's non-denial denial of a solar energy love affair). But what the Obama team is really good at is trolling – that guilty pleasure of know-it-alls everywhere:

Go ahead, get mad: that's my plan.

Trolling is just a perverse refinement of the administration's more obvious fluency in modern media, making intentional a chain reaction that's occurred regularly since he walked on the national stage: Obama's ability to infuriate conservatives by his very existence. What's new is the glee his team takes in setting that chain reaction off: note the decision to release photos of the president skeet shooting – not with a resigned sense of "now, do you believe us?" but rather, as Obama adviser David Plouffe tweeted:

So, expect Obama to bemoan the sequester's drastic cuts in spending even though, yes, the White House agreed to them as fully as did the GOP. Republicans will froth and churn out emails and Fox News soundbites proving White House complicity, which will matter little if one is mainly concerned about preventing the cuts. Americans, when polled, typically self-divided, would like both to cut spending in general (as opposed to raising taxes, 49 to 30%) and to not cut any of the specific programs up for consideration (though 40% agree the military should be up for consideration). This is not an ideal attitude in a citizenry, but it is one that the Obama administration can work to its advantage at the moment.

It wouldn't be real Obama trolling if they left out social issues entirely, either. In his references to climate change, gun law, immigration and marriage equality, he'll either highlight GOP exceptions and compromisers – their "bravery" or some such – or he'll talk about putting the people, justice, planet, safety or children "first", a flick at the supposed selfishness of those who disagree with the policies he's forwarding. This has happened often enough that I think Republicans are working on a hashtag for it.

But Obama is not mischaracterizing his opponents so much as digging into their egos, hoping they will protectively inflate and expand to fill airtime on Fox, where the discussion will inevitably be about tactics, hypocrisy, and anger. Meanwhile, the president signs executive orders and keeps in step with America's larger lurch leftward.

Marco Rubio, the official GOP rebutter Tuesday night, is young enough at least to grasp the format of the troll v trolled relationship. He is also a fan of hip-hop, a genre that rewards unflappability and preaches striking back at opponents' weaknesses rather than getting sidetracked into a debate about one's own. (The featured speaker at the next Republican retreat should be Eminem, who meets the Republican requirements for minority outreach as well.)

But Rubio will only be as effective as Republicans let him be. The post-state of the union spot has recently not benefited either the guest or the party, and one interpretation of Rubio's selection is that the GOP continues to believe that its problem lies in the messengers and not the message. Rubio, after all, has succeeded in his party not because he has said anything different than what his colleagues are saying, but because he says it most pleasantly.

Policy-wise, for the most part, Rubio is an unreconstructed southern Republican. And on immigration, where he is substantially more moderate than most Republican officials, conservative commentators appear to just ignore the great swath of agreement between Rubio and Obama and focus on how Rubio could beat the guy.

The GOP got stuck in its own Obamacentrism, pinning all its hopes in 2012 on an anti-Obama strategy that might have resonated in 2010, but was well past its sell-by date before the Republican primary season was done. What his GOP opponents missed was that Obama won in 2008, in part, because he wasn't a direct response to George W Bush: he rode in not on a vengeful wish to undo the past, but on a wave of optimism about how the future could be different.

And now, after weathering GOP rage through his first term and learning the fruitlessness of placating it, Obama has found a way to turn his opponents' anger against themselves. Hail the Troller-in-Chief.